Securing coiled material for transport is generally difficult. For example, steel coils are processed at plants across the world and need to be ship to various locations across the world. The coils comprise steel that is formed into wires or sheets and is rolled into coil form into a cylindrical structure. The steel coils can typically weigh in the range of one-thousand (1,000) to over one-hundred thousand (100,000) pounds. The shear size, weight, and general shape of the coils make supporting and transporting them difficult. Since the coils are in a cylindrical form they are prone to rolling, and are otherwise difficult to handle during production, loading, and transport.
Typically the coils are loaded onto trucks, trains, boats, planes, and other vehicles (“transport systems”) and shipped across the world. While in transit the steel coils are susceptible to breaking free of their supports and causing damage. The steel coils could come loose for any number of reasons, for example, to name a few, they may not have been properly secured to the tractor-trailer, the mechanisms for securing the coils fail without warning, inexperienced tractor trailer drivers or other drivers make driving mistakes, the highways, roadways, or bridges are in bad condition (i.e. pot holes, snow or ice covered, etc.).
Attempts to solve the problem rely on the driver's ability to secure the load to the vehicle. Typically, most states require that steel coil loads have one chain per ten thousand (10,000) lbs of coil. The chains are secured in various configurations around and through the eyeholes of the steel coils, which causes unequal loading if they are not properly set up, as well as damage and disfigurement to the steel coils themselves, causing damage to the product and increasing the chances of steel coils becoming unsecured during transport. However, despite the associated issues chain configurations are usually accepted in most transportation situations because of the relative low cost of using the chains over more robust and costly configurations.
Therefore, there is a need to develop apparatuses and methods that help improve the support and transportation of steel coils that result in improved safety of the configurations and reduction in the associated costs.